Batching It

Two weeks ago, Karis headed out to Utah for his annual ski trip.  Upon the end of each, he faithfully texts Amy to say "off the mountain!" so she can breathe a sigh of relief that he is okay for another day!  He had a grand time with the guys, and Amy made the most of her time at home with the kids (starting off with the trip to the Tampa Zoo where she was licked by birds!).

Eating breakfast one day in their house - thanks I believe to Mr. Doug!

A whole group shot

The pre-ski exercising! :)

 On the home front, we made banana bread (yum!) and hit the church's Saturday night Veggie-tales movie - before hitting Sunday hard with both soccer and basketball.  Whew - three busy days in a row made for a fun-filled (and tiring!) weekend!

Apparently one Z-child must always be unclothed as we bake in this house......

Drinking hot chocolate and eating popcorn while watching the movie.

We, along with you and all of the rest of the world (is it a world-wide holiday????) celebrated V-day as well last weekend.  With the fact that we just hate to wait in long lines for a restaurants, we typically just get take-out food and enjoy the peace of our own home.  So, we decided to get the kids into the fun as well and had a "candle-light" dinner at home and exchanged our cards.   Addison kept singing "happy birthday" when we lit the candles, so it was a bit confusing - but we ended the night with letting the kids blow out the candles multiple times! :)

Several of the Valentine's Day cards were just so precious that we decided to take a picture and put them on here for posterity sake.  The first is from Blake, Jenn's oldest boy that Zachary has been bonded with since they were 18 months old.  He wrote a card to Zach in their school class - and it just melted Amy's heart!  The second is from Zachary - very sweet as well, and we're very pleased to see his printing improving so much!

Phrase of the week:  Mommy, my legs hurt - I guess I just have sensitive bones.  Poor Zach - he had a few days where his legs were hurting (probably growing pains - the kid is growing like a weed!!) and he was befuddled about how his legs could be so sensitive!

Addison's phrase lately is "Addi do it Mom!!" - she is quite insistent that she MUST do it and gets very upset if she is thwarted!

The Bird Whisperer

Last weekend, Amy took Friday off, and accompanied the kids on a field trip to the Tampa Zoo (year #2 for this as it is SUPER fun!).  We took Addison this time, as she is old enough to have a nap later in the day.  We had a really good time, but the oddest experience was walking into the lorikeet feeding cage where all of us got some of the fruit juice.  There were a lot of people in the cage, but apparently Amy was "The Bird Whisperer" - they were all flocking to her - landing on her arms/shoulders/hair (maybe it's my shampoo).  It made it easy for the kids to be able to feed them as she could just bend down to their level.

 

The licking of Amy's hair was less than desired.....umm, is there a shower nearby??

Addison just loved feeding the birds - unlike the giraffe which is pictured later!

As it was a school field trip, there were several families that we knew well - including the Bergherms, Biris, and Meidingers (who weren't in this picture as they were looking at the giraffe).


A moment with mom...

Gotta love these munchkins!

One of Amy's favorite things is the feeding of the giraffes - how cool is that!?  Anyway, Zachary sort of disgustedly said the night before "Oh mom, you just want to feed the giraffes to see if they'll lick my hair again..... I remember that they did that, because I read your blog!"  Busted.  Ha ha ha - it is STILL fun even if they don't lick your hair!  Addison wanted nothing to do with the giraffe giant - saying "Addi no like it!  Eat me!" so it was just a picture of the boys.

No licking of his hair...

Kaleb wasn't 100% sure about doing this, so it is a favor to his mother....

Here's the whole group!

Only a face a mother could love....

The smaller kids have a great time going on the carousel - this is Maddox and Marshall M with Addi.  Marshall and Addison are close to the same age, and Marshall used to really love Addi - but that was when she was quite shy and hesitant of other people....she played 'hard to get' long enough that he's now moved on, although they do still like to play together!   Addison now does seem enamored with Marshall, and when Amy asked her one day what she did at Jennifer's, she said "Go Marshall house!"  Well - in truth they had just gone to the library where they normally see Marshall....ha ha ha, apparently Addi thinks that Marshall's house is the library! :)

Maddox, Addison and Marshall (right hand side)

Happy as a clam

Always a fan favorite.

Kaleb showed his caring heart again as we were walking through and there was fish food that was "free" (also interpreted as the coin machine was broken, and the food was just coming out anyway) - so the kids were all swarming it and poor Maddox and Marshall (being the smaller kids) weren't able to actually get any of the food.  Kaleb noticed, and went up and got the food and turned around and gave it to them so that they could feed the fish.  Makes a mom's heart proud!!!

On the way out, we took an opportunity to get a family picture - proof of the fun day that we all had!

With the fact that she missed her nap, she was out in about 15 minutes on the way home.....but in this uncomfortable position, it didn't last long! 

Phrase of the week:  Karis was getting Addison dressed again after a diaper change this week when he didn't pull up her pants properly.  Feeling that the pants situation was not quite right, she looked down and declared "Daddy, my booty fell out!!" 

Celebrating a Milestone Birthday!

Last week we hosted a birthday party for Amy's mom - who was celebrating a milestone birthday....that may or may not have had something to do with the year 1945.....we had her friends over, including the kids that she currently babysits (the Js and the Cs) - it ended up being about 18 people in all, so it was a fun evening to celebrate this momentous occasion!

We pushed the easy button and catered it from Olive Garden, which made the evening a very relaxed one.  Amy stole an idea from Lorie (sister-in-law) and created 'placemats' with interesting facts and trivia about 1945.  Did you know that this was the year that the Slinky was invented and the ballpoint pen went on sale in New York for a whopping $12.50 (which at the minimum wage of 40 cents per hour would have taken almost one week of work to save up for!!). And of course this year marked the end of the World War II and the start of the UN.  Important stuff - but not so special as the birth of Bobbi Babiuk - a lady who has spent a lifetime caring for others and giving of herself!  We're blessed to call her Mom and Grandma! 


Celebration #1 two weeks ago on her actual birthday!

Building legos with Grandma is always a special time!

It was a momentous weekend, because of course the "Big Game" happened on Sunday - hosted by the Cochrans.  It was super fun as they had lots of people over, and we all watched with baited breath to see what would happen.  After the whole "deflate-gate" the Z family was a house-divided with Zachary already being a Seahawks fan and Amy deciding that she couldn't cheer for a team that went against the rules (she's as rule follower, what can we say?) with Daddy Z still cheering for the Patriots.  We all know how that ended - with Daddy Z being the victor.  The play of the game had to be that guy catching the ball after it bounced all over him to kingdom come while he fell onto the ground and then had the wherewithal to pick himself up and try to keep running!  Wow!

A panorama before the eating began!

Watching the game...still happy at this point! :)

Addi could care less about the game - only about holding baby London!

In other news, we headed out to watch the Science guy the weekend before and didn't manage to post the pictures.  He had lots of fun experiments and at the end, had a musical instrument that you "play" by not touching at all!  It had a magnetic field around it and the volume and the pitch changed as your hand moved.  The boys thought that was quite something special, and so did Mommy!

Phrase of the week:  The boys have gotten into saying who they "like" for the opposite gender.  One night as they were telling on each other (he likes so-and-so, much to the other brother's horror) - when Amy asked Kaleb "Oh, I thought that you liked Lindsay?" and he said "Not right now, I may come back to her though!"  Ha ha ha - what a Casanova!  Let's be clear, they don't really have the concept of what "like" means, and they are all good friends with these girls, but it did make us laugh!

Zachary seems to be going through a growth spurt and his legs/bones are aching.  This week he fell over a cone at school and had to sit out most of recess as he was hurting.  When Amy was talking about it he said "Yeah, whenever I hit my legs they hurt.....I just have sensitive bones."  Never heard of "sensitive" bones before - but sadly we have experience of course in our own childhoods of growing pains....not fun!